My thesis project stems from the need of a structured lexicon dedicated to the training of design students.
Design is a discipline that is often mythologized consisting of many terms frequently inflated by everyday use.
When we are asked what Design is, we often resort to various concepts and content associations.
Design is a discipline that is often mythologized consisting of many terms frequently inflated by everyday use.
When we are asked what Design is, we often resort to various concepts and content associations.
The project is, therefore, based on the research of meaning, conveyed in a small glossary, intended not only for the description or explanation of the words chosen, but for inspiring further thoughts.
As written by Georges Bataille, French philosopher, 'A dictionary is that when it no longer provides the meaning of words, but their function '.
It's an interpretive tool, but it's also operating in the creation and production of design. It has a didactic and cognitive purpose. It contextualises specifics that enhance the design in its entirety, strengthening the critical consciousness necessary for young designers who, like me, sometimes overlook this universe, losing sight of the meaning and structure without the use of a proper language.
I have picked one word for each letter of the italian alphabet, and for each of those I gave voice to a designer or a thinker, to represent some of the guiding principles of design: from the Bauhaus theory of Walter Gropius to the 'techne' of Aristotle; from Charles Baudelaire's thoughts to Picasso's observations; from the mathematical logic of Henri Poincare to the experience of Buckminster Fuller, and so on.
The end goal was clarity, hence the chosen style had to be minimalist. This preference led to the subsequent associative approach: the theme is design, therefore it's the design itself to act as a visual caption to its content. The design objects, among the most emblematic and popular, are the protagonists of each page alongside the word intended for the lexical definition.
Recent trends of the new generation are addressed to the past, referring precisely to the years in which these objects are dated. Name the rediscovery of the 'vintage', or the craze for the Instagram application for mobile, which makes your photos in Polaroid style. Apparenlty the retro is sought after.
Researches of graphics of the past.
e.g. Letter B as in 'Beauty'.
What is Beauty and how a designer has to take it into account? Is it just aesthetics or also function? Here's the Fiat 500 silhouette, it's a design masterpiece - everyone still likes it.
Quoting Baudelaire: "All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory, of the absolute and of the particular".
Above: my graduation panel (100x70 cm), presenting the 20 concepts - analysis, beauty, creativity, decoration, aesthetic experience, taste, form, idea, language, material, nature, object, problem, quantity and quality, rule, synthesis, technique, mankind, variety, zero.
